


Our Lives Are Made In These Twists And Turns Of Fate

by MetalArmMagnets



Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Matteusz's POV, Maybe a little angst, Set pre/during episode 1, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Well that's what this one is, You know that Soulmate thing where anything you draw on your skin appears on them too?, but not really, this is literally just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetalArmMagnets/pseuds/MetalArmMagnets
Summary: Matteusz had long ago given up on the idea of soulmates. Well, he’d given up on the idea that he’d ever findhissoulmate.





	

Matteusz had long ago given up on the idea of soulmates. Well, he’d given up on the idea that he’d ever find  _ his _ soulmate. As a kid the idea of finding someone to love unconditionally was a beautiful prospect, his Babcia and Dziadzia evidence that true love was real. He would sometimes sit between them and draw on his Babcia’s hand, laughing delightedly as the same lines appeared on his Dziadzia’s.

The only flaw in his childlike fascination, were his parents. They were not soulmates, and liked to remind him of that fact. They were a part of a group who refused to let fate tell them who to love, deciding that they would be the only ones to dictate who they could love. They ignored the occasional scribbles that appeared on each other’s hands, refusing to answer desperately scrawled notes of  _ “where are you?”, “are you out there?”, “am I broken?”. _

The thing with soulmates is that they're only really magical if you have one. Everyone knows that the marks don't become clear until you’re ready, everything before being simply faint smudges that give you hope until the day you can finally begin to see the pictures and words your soulmate deems important enough to scratch on their skin. However ‘ready’ was a relative term, used to describe the moment that you and your soulmate could dedicate your hearts to each other. Soulmates were not always exclusive, sometimes you’d lose one before you even got to meet them, the marks fading to nothing, and sometimes new writing would appear, a different pen, a different person.

However a truth universally known was that no-one was ever markless, especially not beyond the age of ten. It was near impossible for a child to go through life without ending up with some pen mark adorning their, and their soulmate’s skin.

Which is why by the time Matteusz turned ten, he’d given up on ever having a soulmate. During the early years of high school, he would sit at the back of his class, writing careful notes on his hand in his limited English. Occasionally he would just write Polish, hoping that wherever his soulmate was, they had a translator of some kind. But he soon came to accept that there was no reply, not even the faint smudges of a soulmate not yet ready to be met. He was an open book with no-one to read his pages.

When Matteusz turned 12 he told his parents he didn’t have a soulmate. They made him a cheesecake and told him that it didn’t matter, he could be just like them, choose who he wanted to love without the hassle of having a soulmate predefined.

When Matteusz turned 14 he told his parents he was gay. His mother cried and his father refused to look him in the eye for a week. They told him he would go to hell and he heard his mother praying to god asking why they had been given a sinner for a son.

When Matteusz turned 15 his parents never mentioned his sexuality. They never questioned him or asked after a partner. They lived in a delicate balance in which his parents could ignore that part of his life and he was free to carry on with school whilst still living under their roof.

When Matteusz turned 17 he met Charlie Smith. 

A boy who stumbled through his days, pausing at the wrong time in conversations, a stare that was both unnatural and charming. His confusion at the simplest things reminded Matteusz of when he’d first arrived in the UK, stumbling through sentences and differing popular culture references.

Matteusz had long ago stopped drawing on his skin, leaving it unblemished by ink. He noticed how clean Charlie kept his hands, it seemed almost like common grime seemed to shy away from touching the beautiful boy. Matteusz would often snap out of a daze during class, too busy watching the controlled movements of Charlie’s hands as he copied down notes in his carefully attentive fashion. He’d taken to hoping that maybe, just maybe, Charlie was like him. Soulmateless. He’d curse himself for thinking it afterwards, Charlie didn’t deserve to be without someone to love him, he probably kept his soulmate marks on his forearms away from prying eyes.

And so Matteusz carried on, and if his thoughts, and eyes drifted from physics to Charlie a few times a week, who could really blame him. It didn’t help that occasionally Charlie turned around to look right back.

It was around a month into the first term when it happened.

Matteusz was sitting in bed, half attempting the new physics problem half watching a rerun of a panel game show on Dave. He was tapping his pencil on the page staring at the mix of numbers and words which he couldn’t wrap his brain around. Finally, with a frustrated sigh, he threw the offending book on the floor and rubbed his bleary eyes. He slumped back onto his duvet and yawned widely. Rolling onto his right side, he reached out to move his pillow from where it covered the face of his alarm clock on the bedside table.

Matteusz froze. Just visible from where the edge of his hoodie had been tugged up, he could see dark lines encircling his wrist.

Scrambling into a sitting position, he wrestled with his hoodie, finally tearing it off and throwing it across the room. He raised his arm and his eyes widened. Covering most of his left forearm was a tree. Not a real tree obviously, but a  _ drawing _ . A darkly inked, intricate tree spiraled from his wrist up to his elbow.

Hardly daring to breathe, Matteusz slipped off his bed and got shakily to his feet. Quietly exiting his room, he made his way to the family bathroom, locking the door behind him.

Moving across to the sink he helped up his arm to the mirror, watching as more lines joined those already on encasing most of his inner arm. Gently, he picked up a face flannel and dampened it with the tap. With trepidation he dragged the towel experimentally across the trunk of the delicate illustration. Nothing happened, the ink stayed perfectly flawless. Dropping the towel back onto the side of the sink Matteusz clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the breathy laugh that burst from his lungs. His eyes filled with tears as he realised that this was no trick of the light, this was the mark of a soulmate.

He was so giddy from the thought that he forgot to check if his parents were around before he opened the door. Right in the face of his father.

His father looked at his, slowly disappearing, smile to the rather obvious drawing covering most of his forearm. Matteusz felt like they stood there for aeons. Without saying a word, his father turned and returned downstairs without a backwards glance. Matteusz jumped as the living room door slammed shut, the tears of joy now replaced by those of sorrow.

He returned to his room, closing the door softly behind him. Changing into a pair of pyjamas with long sleeves, he refused to look at the beautiful tree again that night.

The next morning started out as most school days did for Matteusz. His alarm blared at 7am, which he promptly shut off and ignored. It blared again ten minutes later, this time he raised his head blearily assessing the time before shutting it off. Ten minutes after that he actually got out of bed, dragging himself into the small shower in the family bathroom.

He’d just stripped off his shirt when he froze, looking down at his arm Matteusz once again saw the spiraling branches of the strangely beautiful tree. The events of last night came back to him and he sat, practically fell, onto the tiled floor of the bathroom, staring at the design. It was only at this moment that Matteusz began to actually accept the fact that he had a  _ soulmate _ . Someone out there was destined to love, and be loved by, him.

It was with a strange sense of loss, that Matteusz watched as the tree began to run across his skin, the ink smudging and vanishing as the as yet unknown soulmate washed their skin clean of the twisting branches.

Matteusz sat for a few minutes staring at his now blank forearm. Then, remembering that he did actually have school that day, he jumped into the shower and got ready in record time. He was still late to first period.

Physics was the usual torture, Ms Quill making some quip about another element of modern life she despised. Today’s target was Downton Abbey, Matteusz couldn’t say he was a fan and so he didn’t really care much about the discussion going on in the front couple of rows. What he did take note of was when Charlie pulled out his phone, his eyes ever drawn to the other boy’s hands. He watched him type ‘Idris Elba’ into Google, sitting up a bit straighter when Ms Quill took the phone from Charlie. He felt a sudden stab of anger as she dropped the phone, walking back to her desk without a care in the world.

“You can’t do that! That’s his private property,” The accusation came from a girl at the front of the class. Matteusz thought her name was something like Amy, or Anne. He’d never really spoken to her, but at that moment he felt a surge of gratitude that she spoke up about the unfairness of Quill’s treatment to Charlie.

“April Maclean,” April! He knew it started with A, “the answer to the question, are spinsters born or made? You got a date to the prom yet?” Quill’s question reminded Matteusz that the prom was tomorrow night. He’d been avoiding any and all reminders, still feeling like the new kid no one really wanted to be seen with after all these years. Sure he’d talk to people and everyone was friendly, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the kindness was all rather fake, that he was an interesting object to look at, but not one that held much interest for long.

He glanced over at Charlie, he wanted to ask him out but he didn’t even know if he would be interested. Also the new discovery of his soulmate was proving a distraction, Matteusz found himself wishing that it might be Charlie who’d drawn the amazing tree. However all the evidence Matteusz had gathered from his vantage point told him that Charlie didn’t seem like the type to draw, let alone on his own arm.

The squeaking of chalk on the blackboard snapped him out of his contemplation, the mixture of letter and numbers Quill was writing on the board meant nothing to him. He stretched and released a huff of air.

“Don’t look so pained Matteusz,” Quill remarked. God he was going to fail physics.

He copied down the formula and stared at it for a few moments before dropping his pencil and putting his head in his hands. He relaxed back with his hands still in his hair, he caught Charlie looking back at him and he grimaced, eliciting a small smile from the other boy. He quickly ducked his head back down, pretending to do his work, hiding a grin at the thought of making Charlie Smith smile like that.

He managed to make it through the rest of the day without too much hassle, avoiding Charlie as much as possible to stop himself accidentally doing something stupid. Like asking him to the prom, he was pretty sure he’d overheard April talking about asking him anyway.

So when Matteusz saw them talking together as he was walking out of school, he felt his heart twist a little. He sort of knew that it would happen, but it’s different to actually see them together. He  put his headphones in, shoved his hands into his pockets and started on the familiar path back to his house.

A sudden hand on his shoulder made him jump, he yanked out an earbud and turned to face a nervously smiling Charlie. Pulling out his other earbud he moved so that he was looking straight at the other boy.

“Hello. I was not expecting to see you,” Matteusz smiled, trying not to look too confused as to why Charlie had caught up to him, they lived in opposite directions after all.

“Matteusz,” it was nice to hear someone pronounce his name properly, Charlie always seemed to take care with his words, as though every word had some sort of power that needed to be treated with respect, “I was wondering- Well...”

Now this was a first, Charlie was always very forthright about what he wanted to ask. Matteusz was rather concerned about what could possibly be so daunting a question that it caused Charlie to falter. “You were wondering…?” He remembered the early days, when English was a strange tongue, where he’d struggle to get his meaning across in a coherent way. Often people would get annoyed by his stumbling english, often rolling their eyes or second guessing what he wanted to ask. So he tried to prompt Charlie gently, hoping he wouldn’t take it as impatience.

“I wanted to ask if you’d like, well if you wanted to go to the prom with me?” Matteusz froze, his brain had shut down leaving him with no clue as to what was happening anymore. 

Charlie must have taken it as a bad sign as he started to backtrack, “I mean I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry things were a bit different back in Sh-” 

“No!” He’d begun to move away when Matteusz hurriedly made a grab at his arm, “I mean,” he took a deep breath in and smiled, “I would like to go to prom with you Charlie.”

“Oh well that’s, uh, good,” Charlie smiled, soft and happy, it made Matteusz’s insides do a sort of victory dance. “Shall I pick you up?”

“Do you have a car?” Matteusz hadn’t seen Charlie drive anywhere but it wasn’t unusual for kids in their year to have their licenses by now.

“Umm no, I thought maybe I could meet you at yours and we walk in together?”

“Sounds like a date,” Matteusz ducked his head slightly in embarrassment, this is why he had been avoiding Charlie for most of the day.

“I don’t know where you live,” Matteusz looked at Charlie, who was looking a little sheepishly at Matteusz.

“Give me your hand,” Charlie complied with the order and watched as Matteusz cradled his left hand in his own, writing his address in three neat rows, “There, now you know where I live.”

Matteusz was unwilling to let go now that he’d finally gotten to hold Charlie’s hand in his own, so before he released his grip, he raised their linked hands to his face and lightly kissed Charlie’s knuckles. Now they were closer, he noticed he was a few inches taller and Charlie was looking up at their joined hands, Matteusz needed to get out of there before he did something even more embarrassing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Charlie,” Matteusz finally let go of Charlie’s hand and backed away slightly.

“Goodbye Matteusz,” Charlie grinned widely and turned to walk back the way he'd come, Matteusz swore that boy radiated happiness wherever he went.

Matteusz looked down at the hand he’d just been holding Charlie’s with, and turned it over.

For the second time that afternoon, his mind stopped in it’s tracks. He stared down at the back of his hand where there lay three neat rows of his own handwriting. Finally his mind ground back into action, he huffed out an incredulous laugh as he studied the neatly written address.

It seemed that it was in fact Charlie who must have drawn the strange tree the night before, the tree that confirmed that Matteusz had a soulmate, a soulmate who he already happened to be falling a little bit in love with.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in the Class fandom, hope it's alright! If i've made any glaring mistakes please point them out I won't be offended.  
> I found this fic really fun to write, if you have any comments at all I would love to read them. Come talk to me about a bunch of nerds defending their school from alien threats on my Tumblr [Magnvs-Baen](http://magnvs-baen.tumblr.com/)  
> If you have any requests or headcannons I'd love to hear them! I won't make any promises but if I get inspired I'll always give it a go.  
> (Thanks to my fren Jamie for Beta reading)


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